Good morning, Mendips! Today we're stepping back nearly two thousand years for a rather remarkable Mendip discovery, plus a full plate of local news — a new pipe bridge for Shepton Mallet's cider mill, a happy ending for a beloved Glastonbury bookshop, and The Pirates of Penzance taking to the lawns of the Bishop's Palace this Friday. Read on for the full What's On line-up too — Vikings land at Wells and Glastonbury Abbey throws a very starry party this Saturday.

📰 Hot News - Mendips Style — Cider & cheese festival returns · Labyrinth Books saved · Bath Rugby training marquee near Frome

🏺 Feature Article — The Man Who Dug for Water and Found the Roman Empire

🔤 Uxbridge English Dictionary — today's entry

Treasure beneath your feet.

📆 What's On This Week — across the Mendips

🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast

Night at the Abbey returns to Glastonbury Abbey this Saturday for a late-summer celebration of music, light and atmosphere across four stages in the historic ruins. As day turns to night and the abbey glows under illumination, the site fills with a world street-food market, independent traders and bars — all in aid of the abbey's upkeep, as this is a Glastonbury Abbey fundraising event.

Headlining the Main Stage is Sophie Ellis-Bextor, bringing her disco-pop sparkle and powerhouse vocals, alongside Inspiral Carpets, The Blow Monkeys, An Dannsa Dub, The Often Herd and Ruzz Guitar's Blues Revue. Over on the King Arthur Stage, electronic royalty takes over with DJ sets from Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip and Phil Hartnoll of Orbital, plus D:Ream Live, Mr C of The Shamen and Shades of Rhythm — with a silent disco in the Lady Chapel and DJs tucked among the trees for good measure.

Doors open at 2pm and run through to 11pm, with last entry at 7pm. Tickets start at £45 for adults (£35 for children 5-15, 15% off for Abbey PLUS members) and are selling fast — note the event isn't suitable for dogs this year, and there's no BYO alcohol.

→ Full details

Wells Cathedral is throwing open its doors for a second Cider & Cheese Festival, running from noon to 9pm on Saturday 26 September. Expect West Country producers, street food, live music and family entertainment from Wookey Hole Caves, plus the Cathedral's own pop-up café — all in aid of the upkeep of the historic building.

Read full story → (Wells Nub News)

Labyrinth Books, the landmark High Street bookshop in Glastonbury, has new owners after being put up for sale last month. James and Sally North of Holythorn Press took over on 1 September and promise few changes to the shop's much-loved esoteric and Glastonbury-themed stock. Former owner Keridwyn Hershberger had said visa and immigration complexities made continuing on impossible.

Read full story → (Somerset Leveller)

Bath Rugby has applied to Somerset Council for a seven-metre-high training marquee at its Farleigh House base near Frome, aiming to give the Championship-winning club a year-round, all-weather facility to match rivals like Bristol Bears and Northampton Saints. The marquee would cover a disused tennis court beside the training ground's 3G pitch, with a matt-green roof designed to blend into the surrounding countryside.

Read full story → (Somerset Leveller)

Grab a picnic blanket — Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance sails into the Bishop's Palace gardens this Friday evening for a one-off outdoor performance. Doors are at 6.30pm for the swashbuckling comic opera, staged against the Palace's moat and gatehouse — a proper Mendip summer-into-autumn treat before the nights draw in.

Read full story → (Bishop's Palace)

Spare a thought for William Currell. In November 1887, all he wanted was a decent spring. What he got was one of the finest Roman treasure hoards ever pulled out of the Mendips — and, if you believe the reports, he found it with a single swing of a pick.

East Harptree had a water problem. That summer had been a scorcher, the village supply had all but dried up, and someone had the sensible idea of hunting for an extra spring up in the hills to top up the mains. Currell, a local labourer, was sent up into Harptree Woods to dig for it. Barely six inches below the surface, in ground that was permanently swampy, his spade struck something that definitely wasn't rock — a pewter vessel, already cracked in two, absolutely stuffed with silver.

Inside: nearly 1,500 Roman coins, five silver ingots, and — the sort of detail that makes this story sing — a silver ring set with a carved red stone showing the god Mars, spear in hand, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. The coins spanned the reigns of Constantine the Great through to Gratian, dating the stash to somewhere around AD 375, meaning it had been sitting quietly in that Mendip hillside for roughly 1,500 years before Currell's spring-hunting expedition turned it up.

Nobody knows exactly why it was buried there. Late Roman Britain was not a relaxing place to keep your savings above ground, and a hoard this size — buried near the old Charterhouse mining settlement a few miles east — points to someone with real wealth deciding the ground was safer than the house. Whoever they were, they never came back for it.

The landowner, William Kettlewell of Harptree Court, handed the best 25 coins to the British Museum, where they still sit today. The rest stayed local for decades, kept in the original jar in the parish church — until, rather less romantically, thieves broke into the north aisle sometime in the 1970s and made off with a chunk of it. Most of what survived eventually passed down through the Kettlewell family and went under the hammer at a London auction house in 2016, scattering 1,600-year-old Roman silver into private collections around the world.

So next time the water pressure drops on a hot Mendip summer, don't grumble. Grab a spade. Currell's luck proves you never quite know what's six inches under your feet.

→ Full listings and booking at Wells Film Centre

🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 8 September 2026

Tuesday starts damp but clears by mid-morning into a mostly dry, breezy day with sunny spells (high 18°C). Wednesday and Thursday stay similarly mild with sunny intervals, before Friday and Saturday turn brighter and warmer still — both pushing 21°C with gentle breezes, just the ticket for Night at the Abbey and the weekend's outdoor events.

→ Full 7-day forecast on BBC Weather

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